Martyr (12 page)

“Do your duty,” Mary replied in a quiet voice that quavered only slightly. “I die for my religion.”

Denis had an itch on his nose and scratched it. His back ached from all this standing around and his stomach was a hollow pit that needed filling. He just wished they would cease all the chatter and get on with it, but then some vicar or bishop got up and started speaking, while the condemned droned on in Latin.

At last Mary slipped from her chair onto her knees, and her rising voice cut the Dean of Peterborough short. “I shall die as I have lived, in the true and Holy Catholic faith. All your prayers can avail me but little.” She held her ivory cross above her head and called on God to convert England to the true faith and for Catholics to stand firm.

She seemed disinclined to cease her ramblings, praying for En gland, for Elizabeth, for the Church of Rome. Bull nudged Picket and spoke quietly in his ear. “This is it, lad. Let’s speed things up a bit.”

Together they stepped forward and knelt down in front of Mary in the time-honored tradition and asked for forgiveness for what they were about to do. She readily gave them absolution. “I forgive you with all my heart,” she said firmly. “For I hope this death shall give me an end to all my troubles.”

Bull rose from his knees and started to remove her gown. She shied away from him, then seemed to laugh, maiden-like, saying, “Let me do this. I understand this business better than you. I never had such a
groom
in my chamber.”

Bull backed away. No matter. If the lady wanted to be coy with him, that was her choice. The clothes would all come to him anyway. Two of her three ladies took over now, fluttering and weeping as their dainty hands undid her stays and removed her black gown to reveal her satin underbodice and kirtle, all crimson like a wound. There seemed to be a gasp from the witnesses of the hall, but perhaps it was the soughing of the wind in the chimney.

Removing the gold cross and beads from about her neck, she asked Bull whether she might be allowed to give it to her maid and that he would be paid more than their value in gold. He shook his head and prized the crucifix from her fingers, placing it in his shoe for safekeeping. Then he took her ivory cross, too, and her rosary and handed them to Picket.

Unbidden, as if suddenly deciding she wanted no more delay to the proceedings, Mary gestured to her ladies and one of them bound her eyes with her kerchief, with a knot at her neck, a target for the axe. She stretched forward and rested her chin on her hands, over the edge of the block. Bull nodded to Picket, who stepped forward and pulled her hands away so that her arms stretched out in front of her, held gently in his.

She was speaking now, Latin once more, first a psalm and then, over and over, she commended her soul to God’s hands:
“In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum
.”

Bull raised the heavy, double-edged axe high above his head. It hovered there, at the top of its swing, for an eternity, then fell in a great arc into the back of her skull. The sound of sharp steel cracking bone, like the thud of the butcher’s cleaver, shattered the silence. Bull looked down through the slits in his mask at the gory mess below. Shit, he’d missed her neck. Quickly, he raised the axe again and brought it down once more. This time his aim was true and the blood spurted forth in a fountain.

He knelt down beside her to reach into the gore to pick up her severed head but saw that it still wasn’t severed. Gristly tendons still attached it to the body. With the edge of his axe he sawed through them, then clasped his blood-greasy left hand around her hair and held it up high for all to see.

“This is the head of Mary Stuart!” he bellowed. Only it wasn’t; it was her auburn wig. Her head, all gray and shaven, had rolled forward across the platform. Luckily, no one could see behind his mask, for now he closed his eyes in the closest thing Simon Bull ever came to embarrassment. At last he remembered his lines and took a deep breath. “God save the Queen,” he said with conviction.

It had been a bad day for Simon Bull and it got worse. As they were clearing up and stripping the body, the clothes were taken from him to be burned. He was deprived, too, of the crosses and beads he had taken from her. Walsingham would decide what would happen to them in due course. When Bull, feeling cheated, protested that the effects were his right to keep, someone muttered about “not having any relics left to make a martyr of that bloody woman.”

Finally, there was the dog, a little terrier, all spattered with gore, that scuttled out from the dead woman’s clothes as they were cut from her body to be taken outside and burned in the courtyard. Picket’s eyes lighted on it first and his masked face broke into a smile. “Hello,” he said, lifting it up.

“Put it down,” Bull said sullenly. “If we can’t keep a cross, they won’t let us keep a dog, will they?”

Reluctantly, Denis Picket put the dog down and it ran, whimpering, to the now naked corpse of its mistress. Picket eyed it with something akin to yearning. “You know that mastiff I was telling you about, Mr. Bull? I couldn’t kill it. Still got him at home and a fine creature he is. I call him Bully, after you—”

“Well, then, Denis, you should have called him
Mr
. Bull, shouldn’t you, lad?”

“You’re right, Mr. Bull, I’ll do that. From now on, I’ll call him Mr. Bull.”

Chapter 15

B
ONFIRES LIT THE DAMP NIGHT SKY. ON EVERY STREET
corner and in every tavern, minstrels played merry tunes and people braved the rain to dance, drink, and rejoice. The murdering, adulterous witch of Scotland was dead. After nineteen long years, England was free of her malign presence. By midnight, the pitch black sky was howling, the flames of the bonfires fanned into a firestorm before finally dying down to sodden embers in the early hours when the revelers sank, drunk, into their beds.

Thomas Woode was shaking. While others sang and danced and drank, he sat alone at his table. And when the rest of London was snoring, he stayed awake. He had bitten the last of his nails to the quick and was now nicking pieces of the hard, stubby flesh at the end of each finger. In the gray rain of dawn, his white teeth glimmered in the light of three good beeswax candles, each burnt down to an inch. Their flames flickered and leapt briskly in the drafts that rushed up from the river and in through the gaps at the edge of the leaded lights in his private office in Dowgate. Rain slapped at the window in squally gusts.

This night past he had done without a fire; it would have been improper for him to have warmth when the butchered body of Mary Stuart lay cold in a box. He tore off his ruff and hurled it across the room. He picked up a quill, sliced the tip with his desk knife, and dipped it in the inkhorn. Hurriedly he wrote onto a scrap of parchment, then scratched the words out again. He needed to compose a business letter to Christophe Plantin in the Gulden Passer, the great Antwerp printers and bookworks where so much of his own wealth emanated. The words would not come. He was bone-tired; this was not a time for mundane business dealings.

He heard a scurry, a knock at the oak door. “Come in.”

It was the governess, Catherine Marvell. Woode was wealthy, a merchant of the class that now owned London, but he did not keep a big household. It simply wasn’t safe to do so; not with his secrets. Maidservants came in during the day to see to the housework and cooking, as did carpenters and masons for the construction, but at night it was just him, Catherine, the children, and their two guests, the Jesuit priests Cotton and Herrick, who wore the clothes of serving men in case anyone should call on the house. It was
their
presence that endangered his family.

Thomas Woode knew that everyone in the house was in mortal danger, and it troubled him. Harboring priests sent from abroad amounted to treason in the eyes of the law. London was full of spies and betrayers who could track the priests here at any time and inform the heavy-booted pursuivants of their whereabouts. But Thomas Woode was obligated to accommodate these men; it had been his wife Margaret’s dying wish that he bring up their children in the true faith. They needed instruction and they must hear the Mass regularly. Margaret also wished him to support the persecuted Church in whatever way he could. He had agreed to her requests because he loved her and because she was dying. How could he refuse her in such circumstances? Yet he regretted it every day. He would
never
have taken this path of his own accord. There were times, if truth be told, when he doubted his own belief in God.

There were practicalities to be observed. Yes, Cotton and Herrick could come and go as they pleased; when they went out they would wear the garb of tradesmen or gentlemen. When they were at home, they remained hidden by day. Only by night, when the household staff had gone home, did the priests venture out of the room they shared to eat and converse with the family, dressing as servants.

“Catherine, it is good to see you.”

“Master.”

“A sad day.”

“Yes, master.”

“We must take comfort in the certain knowledge that she is in a better place.”

Thomas Woode had never met Mary Stuart, yet he had revered her. Yes, his faith sometimes faltered, yet he was certain that if there were to be a religion, the Roman Church of Mary was the only possible way; he saw the Anglican church of Elizabeth and her ministers as a sacrilegious imposter, a false religion, a manifestation of power rather than spirituality. When he imagined Mary of Scots, he pictured her with the face of his late beloved wife. He smiled wanly at Catherine. “These are bad days. The people sing and dance, but the ports have all been closed down and the prisons shut to all but official visitors. Pursuivants march the streets, searching and questioning anyone they don’t like the look of. Even the ordinary people play their role, pelting stones at anyone they take to be foreign.”

Catherine’s dark hair hung in soft waves. The shrug of her shoulders was almost imperceptible. “Well then, let us stay strong.”

Woode found her a strange creature; the fire in her belly was most uncommon in a young woman. While he was mourning a queen others reviled and grieving for the future of this and every Catholic family in the land, Catherine spoke of
strength
. And he had to concede that she
was
strong. Her strength had helped bring new life back to this family since the dark days following Margaret’s death. The children had grown to love her.

“How is the boy?”

“Making mischief as ever,” Catherine answered. “The fever has subsided. It was nought but a winter sweat.”

“That is good, good.”

She looked up and he saw that her startling blue eyes were still bright. In her hands she held a cup of fine Gascon wine, unsweetened. She put it down on his worktable, close to his right hand.

“Thank you, Catherine.”

She breathed deeply, composing herself. “Might I speak plain with you, Master Woode?”

“Why, yes, Catherine. My door is always open to you. Please, sit down. What do you wish to speak on?”

Suddenly she laughed. It was a laugh of release, not of humor. “You will think me a fishwife or a gossip, Master Woode. Coming to you with tittle-tattle.”

Thomas Woode was in his mid-thirties, his sandy hair graying around the temples. He felt himself ageing; his eyes and brow were lined. Yet he was still a well-formed, handsome man. He looked grave. He drank some reviving wine.

“I do not know how to say this without causing offense or showing myself cowardly and lacking in fortitude,” she continued. “I would say nothing for my own sake, but I fear the danger to Andrew and Grace.”

Woode rose and went to sit beside her. He held her hands and squeezed them gently. “Speak plain, Catherine. You are like a mother to my children. Nothing you say can seem out of place to me.”

She was silent a few moments. “It is Father Herrick,” she said at last. “I have … doubts. In plain speaking, I do not like him and I do not trust him, Master Woode. I fear he is not what he purports to be.”

Woode felt the prickles rise on his neck. The sudden thought that a traitor, a spy, was here in this house was simply too terrifying. “You think he is one of Walsingham’s men?”

Catherine shook her head. “That is
not
what I think. Not necessarily, though it is possible.” She wrung her hands together as though kneading dough for bread. “I think he may be something else.”

Thomas Woode smelled her warmth, the salt scent of her stirring him, something that had not been there with any girl or woman since the death of his wife three years ago. “You must speak openly Catherine. What you say will not go beyond these walls.”

How exactly could she explain her doubts about Herrick? It seemed to her that when the priest had first met her friend Blanche at the Bellamys’ house, Uxendon Manor, where they both worshipped, he had looked at her not as a man of chastity should do. Blanche had liked Herrick, that was clear. His feelings for her were less clear.

There were Herrick’s strange comings and goings, the calculating looks Catherine sometimes caught when he thought she wasn’t aware of him at a meal or during Mass. His eyes followed Blanche in an unseemly fashion; was he thinking of her carnally? She suspected that Father Cotton might share her doubts, although he had not said as much. Now she needed to convey these misgivings to Master Woode.

“I know it is sinful to speak ill of the reverend Father, but … let me start at the beginning. When Father Herrick came into our lives, we welcomed him as is meet and proper. You, Father Cotton, and I went out of our way to bring him to the attention of our fellow Catholics, and many welcomed him into their homes to say Mass, or visited him here. One of those he became close to was Lady Blanche, who had been brought to the true faith by Father Cotton and subsequently became my friend. It is the nature of that closeness that came to concern me. Father Herrick was very … familiar with her. I noted it more than once in the way that he touched her. You may think me too free with my opinions, and I will confess that is true. You may even think me lacking in Christian charity, but it seemed to me that Father Herrick’s great interest in Blanche coincided with his learning of her connections to Lord Howard of Effingham.”

“He was sent by the Society of Jesus, Catherine. There can surely be no doubt about
their
motives.”

Catherine smiled. “No, of course not. But hear me through. When I heard Blanche had died in this cruel manner, the face of Father Herrick came immediately to my mind, as in a dreadful dream. In my dream it seemed there was darkness in him, Master Woode. Now that must make me seem even more the village idiot and you may wish to send me to Bethlehem Hospital. I set no store by dreams myself. Yet this vision haunts me. Even in my waking moments, it is an image I cannot dismiss. Why does it haunt me so?”

“A dream, Catherine?” Thomas Woode raised a quizzical eyebrow. He stood and walked the room, slowly. These imaginings of Catherine disturbed and bewildered him. He was exhausted from his night without sleep and he could not think clearly. He needed to rest his head on the pillows and sink between the cool, clean sheets of his bed.

“Yes, master. But not
just
a dream.” She had not wanted to speak of it, as if somehow it were her shameful secret, but now it was necessary. She took a deep breath. “Last week, as you know, the children and I went to the menagerie at the Tower. Andrew began complaining of a stomach pain, so we came home. As we arrived back at Dowgate, he was asleep in my arms and Grace was quiet and subdued. I could hear noises from upstairs. I thought it was one of the maidservants, but then I recalled it was a Holy Day and they were all off work. As I opened the upper floor gallery, I saw two people, Herrick and a woman. I turned away quickly, trying to shield Grace’s eyes, but the child had already seen what I had seen. ‘What are they doing, Mistress Marvell?’ she asked me in her innocence. I didn’t know what to answer. They were both without clothes. Herrick was stretched out, facedown on the floor, and his back was red with weals. The woman’s right arm was raised. In her hand was a knotted scourge, about to come down on Father Herrick’s back. The woman turned and saw us, her hand hovering, not completing its stroke. She smiled at me. I pulled the children away and ran to my room with them. Later, Father Herrick came to me. ‘Mistress Marvell,’ he told me, ‘I had not expected you back so soon.’ I asked him what in God’s name he had been doing. He looked at me as if I were slow-witted. ‘
Pax vobiscum
, child,’ he said. ‘I am sorry you have witnessed this. As I am sure you understand, I was exorcising my sins through the offices of that poor sinner.’ I fear I laughed. ‘Father Herrick,’ I said, ‘I am afraid I do not believe a word you say’ A darkness crossed his eyes and I worried that I had overstepped the mark. I thought for a moment he might kill me, so I went on, ‘Of course, I understand it is a private matter and none of my concern.’ Father Herrick hesitated, as if weighing up what he should do. In the end he bowed. ‘Thank you, Catherine. I see you are a woman of the world. I will trust you not to mention this to Master Woode. He may not understand the severity of our Jesuit ways.’ I did not argue then. I just wanted him to go away. I told him I would not mention it to anyone. But now I think you need to be told this.”

Thomas Woode spoke firmly. “I am shocked, Catherine. Shocked and deeply sorry that you have been exposed to such abomination under my roof. I will ask Father Herrick to depart this very day. There is a safe house for priests of which Father Cotton has knowledge. I will ask Father Cotton to take him there. As to Father Cotton himself, he will be leaving us in the next forty-eight hours. He has been offered sanctuary elsewhere. It will be more convenient for him, and safer for us. It has become too dangerous for either of them to stay here. I must confess, Catherine, it will be a great relief to me, too. I can scarce sleep for worry while they are here.”

Catherine rose from the settle. “Thank you, Master Woode.” She lifted the latch to let herself out of the room. But she did not feel completely reassured. It wasn’t enough for Herrick to be leaving. A dangerous man was dangerous anywhere.